Lenovo announces plans to bring manufacturing back to the US

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One of the major themes of the ongoing presidential election in the United States has been the perceived need to bring product manufacturing back to the United States. A recent announcement from Lenovo is going to play to this point; the PC manufacturer said today that it’s building a US location in Whitsett, North Carolina. The new facility is small, with just over 100 people and is being built for a modest $2M, but Lenovo states that it’s merely the beginning of a larger initiative.

For Lenovo, local manufacturing centers are a way to respond more quickly to custom orders from corporate clients and support those orders more effectively. The president of the company’s North American branch, David Schmook, likened the decision to go green. “Being green is not necessarily the lowest-cost option for a lot of companies,” Schmook said, “but you do it because your customers and partners value you being green.”

The Whitsett facility is a drop in the pond for Lenovo — the company does some $30B in business on a yearly basis. Lenovo insists that the facility isn’t a publicity stunt, but merely the spearhead of a longterm investment into the US. That’s a marked contrast from the likes of Dell and HP, which have made headlines over the past few years for the number of jobs they were moving overseas.

There are significant questions regarding whether bringing manufacturing back to the United States would actually halt the growth of inequality or the hollowing out of the middle class. The only way to find out would be to bring jobs back in numbers several orders of magnitude greater than what Lenovo’s proposing, and keep them here for a decade or two to observe the long-term effects. For the Chinese manufacturer, the good PR it’ll likely gain from this timely announcement dwarfs the cost of the plant.

Whether that goodwill will translate into sales is a different question altogether. The global economy has made the entire concept of “Buy America” outdated. Buy a PC, and you’re supporting a mix of Taiwanese, mainland Chinese, Korean, and US companies. Even cars, long the go-to product for some patriotic conspicuous consumption, present a thorny problem. If you buy a Toyota, you’re technically helping a Japanese company — but that company employs thousands of people in Indiana and Kentucky. Dell is an American company that’s outsourced all of its production save for servers and Alienware-branded systems. Which side of the fence you come down on seems to partly depend on whether you want to support American workers or the maximization of corporate profits.

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$2 million is a publicity stunt.
Drop $50 million, build a proper factory, hire 5k workers, watch product cost go up by 10%. Sustain that for a year and then it’ll mean something.

Neon Frank

Blame the suits who sold this division to the Chinese in the first place to “save costs”.

Neon Frank

Oh the irony!

Only twenty years ago Communist China needed US investment dollars and expertise to drag itself out of a virtual “stone-age” and now a Chinese company is graciously investing in the US.

America should be embarrassed into doing something more than waving flags around shouting freedom.

GatzLoc

Death is freedom though, it’s the American way, it’s our way!

Also “One of the major themes of the
ongoing presidential election in the United States has been the
perceived need to bring product manufacturing back to the United States.”

I thought the only theme in the US election was red pill, blue pill. Personally, I like red pills because when I was little the blue pills, and koolaid would always make my tongue turn funny, and being older you should keep it the same color.

This is not a political statement!

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7QOBZ26TQDSDXR4AR4H7LTE2TI John

Looks like the threat of tax hikes for the 1% is starting to make them scared!

http://twitter.com/acoastwalker acoastwalker

When we get the robots working we wont need the Chinese workforce either.

Mereo

The Irony…. A Chinese company bringing manufacturing back to the US while American Companies are outsourcing to China…

mickrussom

Well our traitor government has broken the middle class so badly that our labor is now relatively cheap.

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